Strategies from ‘Inside the Black Box’

The Ath continues to deliver.

CMC alum Jonathan Rosenberg (’83), VP of Product Management at Google, spoke at the Ath a few weeks ago.  He layed out, with unbelievable examples from his experience, 15 principles of business/entrepreneurial success.  In short, he layed out why VC’s give the advice that they do (crackpot as it may sound), in story after ‘Google is taking over the world’ story.  Entrepreneurs enjoy!

1. Hire smart people and don’t let them specialize
2. Openness - Share everything (trust great people and allow them to contribute)
3. Morph ideas - don’t kill them (the economics of technological innovation)
4. Users come first, not money
5. Data drives all decisions (from logs)
6. Plan-Writing fails
7. Vision - memorize the mission statement
8. Think big!
9. OKR (objectives & key results) promises
10. Bet on a trend or fall victim to one
11. Take a small piece of a larger pie
12. Feed the winners starve the losers (functionally-oriented)
13. Avoid hippos (opinions of the highest paid people)
14. Reward innovation (HP)
15. Learn how to learn]

Rosenberg is a fast-thinking, inspiring alum.  He credits Larry, Sergey, and Eric for all of Google’s success, but I do not envision Jonathan sitting silent in the meetings where Google decided to move forward with Google Earth, News, Apps, gmail, or Youtube.  Congrats to him for the success and thank you Google for lifting the Silicon Valley economy.